often it is the only / thing / between you and impossibility / no drink / no woman's love / no wealth/ can / match it / nothing can save you/ except writing.
Charles Bukowski

Monday, February 8, 2010

The Proust Questionnaire: Delphin Lecompte

Delphine Lecompte is the author of the novel Kittens in the Boiler from Thieves Jargon Press. Her stories are all over the Internet. She writes like no one else writing today. Delphine has created a grotesque, comic, absurd, and highly unique world. If Borges had invented a story with a Belgian prostitute, it would be Delphine Lecompte. You want to read real underground literature, you pick up Kittens in the Boiler. I would also dare to compare her to Henry Miller. Her prose is lucid and soaked with brilliance. Please check out her stuff below:

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?Writing a prose poem at the kitchen table whilst my lover is ironing my favourite blouse with exquisite care, noone is whistling and i'm expecting a call from a close friend.

2. What is your greatest fear?Choking on a thumbtack, being poisoned.

3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?Unforgiveness.

4. What is the trait you most deplore in others?Sentimentality.

5. Which living person do you most admire?Leonard Cohen.

6. What is your greatest extravagance?Fire.

7. What is your current state of mind?Fragmented.

8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?Hopefulness.

9. On what occasion do you lie?Sitting in front of well-meaning little therapists.

10. What do you most dislike about your appearance?My nose.

11. Which living person do you most despise?The prime minister.

12. What is the quality you most like in a man?Insatiability.

13. What is the quality you most like in a woman?Belligerence.

14. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?Sorry, it won't happen again, i'll make it up.

15. What or who is the greatest love of your life?Omer Minnebo, 'my dodgy neighbour'.

16. When and where were you happiest?I was deliriously happy on a breakwater on the 16th of february 2001 when i escaped from the nuthouse for a few hours.

17. Which talent would you most like to have?Taxidermy.

18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?My skin. I would like it to be more amphibian.